(Theme Forty-Eight) "Nights in White Satin" - The Moody Blues

(As prompted by) HeavenBesideYou13

"What is it?" Ty Lee asks, pushing open the door and instantly seeing that something is off about Azula. She is holding something up to the light of the window, the blazing sun shining in her raven hair and illuminating the contours of her concerned expression.

Azula shrugs and sets down the piece of paper. She stares at it for a moment and Ty Lee wishes she were better at reading this kind of situation.

"I got a letter," Azula says finally, shrugging. That is an evident half-truth.

"From who?" Ty Lee asks, genuinely surprised. She cannot think of anyone who would write to Azula.

"Why is that so surprising?" Azula snaps and Ty Lee recoils. "I have friends. I have lots of friends. Don't interfere."

Azula seizes the envelope and escapes, but the letter flutters to the floor behind her without her noticing. Ty Lee watches the door slam as she chokes on words she cannot form. She looks down at the letter on the cold stone floor and picks it up.

She reads it slowly and realizes who it is from. And how belated it is.

It is from Azula's father. After years of ignoring her once she was of no use to him, he decides... Ty Lee does not know what he decides but it angers her. And now the Azula she has carefully built is going to crash until she can be slowly built up again.

Ty Lee moves to crumple it but changes her mind. She just folds it into little pieces and sets it on Azula's vanity table.

She wrote Azula so many letters that she never sent. Maybe she never meant to send them. It was when Azula was in the asylum and Ty Lee was too afraid to visit her, and instead wrote her feelings over and over again and crossed them out. She kept them in a small locked box and lied to say they were to an old boyfriend.

No one could understand her feelings for Azula. And no one could understand what Ty Lee would go through, and has gone through for her. Most of all, no one can understand the magnitude of what Azula goes through. Every day. To the point where her personality is consumed by illness and it is unclear where Azula ends and the tortured soul begins.

But Ty Lee loves her. Oh, how she loves her.

And so she tracks her down. She slips through the palace as quickly as she can, looking to find Azula's usual place. It requires climbing out of a window and onto the roof, and, luckily, Azula is there. She is staring out at the city of Caldera, the city she refuses to go into because the whispers bother her and she sees no point.

"I read the letter," Ty Lee says bluntly, although she did not intend to lead in with that..

"It's not the first he's sent," Azula replies and Ty Lee is shocked at her honesty. And slightly angry that Azula never told her. "He started a year ago or so. I don't believe any of it."

Ty Lee sits on the roof with her lips pursed, the ash laced wind billowing through her hair. She fidgets and looks at how perfectly still Azula sits. The princess looks magnificent in the sunlight, even when her eyes are somewhere very far away.

"He loves you."

"Don't act like you understand," Azula snaps fiercely. Ty Lee rubs her lips together and averts her eyes. "You don't. No one does. If I thought people would understand I wouldn't have a stack of letters from a war criminal stuffed in my fucking underwear drawer."

"I'm sorry," Ty Lee says softly, rubbing her neck. She makes a slight, pained whimper and Azula feels a twinge of alien guilt. "I try to understand."

Azula takes a deep breath. "You understand more than most people. Don't think I don't appreciate everything you've done for me. I'm not exactly the best at expressing my feelings unless I'm also smashing things."

Ty Lee smiles faintly. Azula has a flicker of a smirk that disappears from her face as she squints at the shreds of clouds in the bright blue sky.

"I wrote a lot of letters to you," Ty Lee says and Azula turns to face her. "I never sent them or I think ever planned on sending them. And I kept writing them and writing them. First I wanted to send them to you in the asylum, then you were just I don't know where and so I definitely wasn't sending those ones. They kinda all said the same thing."

"What?" Azula laughs mirthlessly. She seems both amused and detached and Ty Lee does not know what to make of it.

"A lot of things. Sometimes really angry and other times just missing you and other times letters about things that happened to me or how my day was that I bet you would have burned from boredom if you read them." Pause. "They all can be summed up with, uh, well... I love you. I guess I love you."

It is the first 'I love you' that isn't Ty Lee clinging to Azula as she cries. It is the first told out in the open, even if they are tens of feet above the ground and far away from any other people to overhear.

"I'm glad you didn't send them," is Azula's response, which she immediately regrets. But she does not know what else to say.

"I saved most of them," Ty Lee says softly and Azula studies her for a moment. "When I told you I loved you when we were teenagers, you just said you couldn't say it back without lying."

"Honestly, most of the time I'm not quite sure what the truth even is." Azula shrugs. "I..." She cringes and Ty Lee does not know what to do. "I love you. But honestly I don't know where this is going and it probably isn't going anywhere good for either of us."

Ty Lee pauses. Azula waits for her to make an excuse to leave. She already regrets admitting her feelings, which she planned to never do even if she was being ripped limb from limb.

"I think that, eventually, whatever you want to be, you are in the end," Ty Lee says and Azula rolls her eyes.

"Your optimism disgusts me."

Azula crawls across the roof and presses her lips to Ty Lee's.

Oh, how I love you.